Domestic Bliss

Doesn't everyone garden like this?

Dressed to the nines like a 1950's housewife!  Okay, I confess, this dress was never intended to be worn for gardening.  You, don't say, I hear you all chorus!  This is going to be the Christmas dress.  It was chosen and designed by Courteney and executed by me.   By executed I mean, she told me what she wanted and I had to make it happen.  My brief was, I kid you not, the dress of a newsreader on a tv show one particularly early Saturday morning.  I had to absorb every detail of this newsreaders dress after being dragged bleary eyed from my slumber.

We chose the fabric from Fabric Vision.  The lace was conveniently on the $8 sale table, the burgungy was on the $3 sale table and the satin lining was on the remnant table. 

I started with Sewaholic Alma in size 2.  The top is made of lace and underlined with satin lining. 
I was going to use Sewaholic Cambie skirt for the lower half but my burgundy fabric was a little too heavy for such a full skirt so in the end, I made it to my own measurements.  Fortunately the Alma is supposed to have a side invisible zip closure so this was pretty easy to translate into a dress.

The dress had to have a keyhole opening which initially I avoided but upon completion it was obvious that the size 2 was not going to easily fit over my daughters head so the keyhole was cut grudgingly in my newly completed project out of necessity. I made some bias tape out of the left overs from the skirt and this was used to finish both the keyhole and the arm holes.  The keyhole closes with a hook and eye.

Courteney is pretty happy with the results and it fits like a glove.  She wants to wear it, not with the pretty sandals, but a canvas pair of Vans....go figure!